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One of the big differences between a large software shop and an ISV is the type of support offered.

A large software company may have a toll free number and operators standing by, but they often walk you through a series of canned steps and are often not be able to help with your specific problem. In addition, you pay a premium on the software since it includes this support and the additional overhead you get with a large company1.

An ISV like King Designdoesn’t offer free phone support, instead offering in-depth documentation, forums and e-mail support. If those avenues fail phone support can always be purchased, but the support costs are not included in the software price which keeps the software priced at a fraction of what you’d pay from a large vendor. Often times (like King Design) the developer is answering support issues directly, meaning almost every question can be answered and there are many known issues that can be quickly identified.

Time is a very valuable resource to a small development shop. How you choose to allocate your time is one of the most crucial decisions you will face while working to make the business succeed.

Offering in depth phone support can easily consume ~2-8 hours of every day once you reach several thousand customers. In order to be able to offer that much time in support, you have to give up time that could be spent on development (and sales, marketing, etc.) and may well need to hire additional help. If that time is not billable, you would then need to charge more money for the software, so that the purchase price of the software also covers the future support costs. I’ve decided that my customers are best served by me:

spending as much time building new features for them as possible

keeping the price of my software low

providing as many self-help tools as possible

Does that mean that my customers have to be more self-reliant and work through some issues on their own? Yes it does.

Is this an approach that all potential customers will be happy with? No, certainly not.

However, it seems to be a solution that the vast majority of my customers are quite satisfied with.

Perhaps a better question is: would you be happier paying $1250 for a 5 user license will full support? Or $125 for a license with only documentation, forums and e-mail support with the option to purchase support as needed?2

I’m sure different customers would have different answers to this. I do know that on occasion I get a customer who is completely dissatisfied with this the options I offer.

I wonder if there is a better approach to this that I haven’t considered.

I know that some software companies are now offering support as a separate purchase, but I don’t consider that to be the norm yet – am I wrong? [back]

Perhaps a slight exaggeration on price, but I’ve helped build enterprise software that has an average sale prive of $150,000. [back]

This post is part of the project: Tasks Pro™. View the project timeline for more context on this post.

I don’t know, I think you pretty much have it pegged right. The only thing I can think of that you didn’t mention is outsourcing the support. Basically paying a guy ~$10/hr or something to have a 1-800 number directed at him for 4,5,8 hours or whatever, and he/she watches over your email helpdesk as well.

I used to be in webhosting (got out of it due to such low profit margins and constant demands on my time), and outsourcing support was getting really popular.

Personally I think it’s kind of sketchy to be honest though. Sure, you can get routeable 888 numbers for almost nothing, and $10/hr (or less) isn’t that much to pay someone if it free’s you up for development/debugging, etc. But A) You still have to recoup that cost through higher service fee’s, and B) the level of support offered by them is typically … sub-standard, and it is ESPECIALLY going to be that way in the eye’s of the person that made the software.

From your recent posts, I’m sensing frustration from you about subscription fee’s vs. the time you’re investing in your project. The only advice I can give you is to decide either A) it’s not worth it and bail (which I doubt is likely) or B) as you said, your time is valuable, your producing products people want to use, and are going to be willing to pay for.

Trust me, there are plenty of us out here willing to pay for Feedlounge, Tasks, whatever else. We … or I, have just been trying to sit back silently while you get it all worked out. From what I’ve seen/read of feedlounge I actually think $10/mo sounds pretty reasonable and I would hope would allow you a little wiggle room to continue feature development, and offer whatever level of service you are able to (email is a minimum if you ask me, and would be fine at the $10/mo pricepoint as long as it wasn’t 2+ days to get a response).

Wow … I wrote a novel, sorry about that. Just wanted to give you some reassurance that paying customers are out there. ‘Build it and they will come’.

I wouldn’t say I’m frustrated at all – on the contrary, things are going very well which is where a lot of these “problems” stem from. In large part, they are growing pains.

The vocal minority can be rather time consuming and part of my motivation for posting this is to have an in-depth explanation I can point people to if they appear to be frustrated with my support policies. Also, on the off chance I’d totally missed a better solution.

FeedLounge is really a different situation altogether. FeedLounge will grow to be larger than Tasks within months of it’s public release, but the team supporting it is already larger and we’ll be actively adding more heads and hands to deal with the growth as it comes.

The recent post about FeedLounge subscription fees was an attempt to explain the difference between web 1.0 and web 2.0 services. With web 1.0, money was free and so were the services – and most of them aren’t around anymore. We intend FeedLounge to be a pillar in the new group of web 2.0 applications and to do that, we need to make it successful financially as well as popular.

I’ve even been getting back into development on my personal time lately. My main problem is finding that nitch that no one has tackled yet. I’m pretty good with PHP/MySQL and I’ve even been getting into AJAX lately. Been building my own Backpack service so I can have the little niceties that I want in it which aren’t in 37Signal’s product. But that probably won’t see the light of day to anyone else since 37Signals is already doing a pretty good job at it. Oh well, one day I’ll find my own feedlounge

Anyhow, best of luck with the service, I’m glad things are going so well and that there’s such a huge interest. The response you got to allowing in more Alpha users was phenomonal (inal, onal? no idea).

Alex King, founder of King Design, who has produced Tasks (a web based task management app) and Feedlounge (a web based RSS reader) gives us his thoughts on offering support as a microISV business owner. He has made the choice to not offer free phone …

One of the hardest things for an ISV1 like myself and others is the balancing of roles; coder, business, marketing and product support. Support is one of the easiest areas to cut corners on because it takes place after the sale, but personal support …